The bridge maintenance factors model: A pls-sem approach

Bridge maintenance is essential to maintain the function of the bridge in serving transportation. Decision-makers face many challenges in keeping old bridges with excellent and continuous care while the available budget is limited for maintenance planning. Setting up a priority for handling rehabilitation and maintaining a bridge must pay attention to appropriate criteria that directly influence the treatment priority scale system. Then the requirements related to prioritizing maintenance are investigated, and a model is developed to examine the effect and relationship of these criteria in bridge and the priority determination of bridge maintenance. Factors are determined based on existing regulations, previous research literature studies, and stakeholders’ interviews regarding bridge rehabilitation and care. The data collected from the questionnaire survey were analyzed with the partial least squares approach of the structural equation modeling technique (PLS-SEM). This model adapts 13 sub-criteria from three priority maintenance criteria: technical (structural), technical (functional), and non-technical. The PLS-SEM model’s result confirms that if non-technical and technical-functional influence is strong, the technical-structural will become more substantial and increase the priority support for bridge maintenance. In the context of bridge maintenance, this study’s results enrich knowledge about the factors in the decision-making model and the relationship between technical and non-technical aspects. © 2021 by authors, all rights reserved.